Earthquake off Japanese shore, Tsunami hits the Mainland

Big Red Tie

luckily my friend's relatives aren't in the main city that was hit
they've probably evacuated

SabreMau

Ikebukuro after building evacuation.

I remember those buildings; the hotel room I was in is in this video shot. It's inland Tokyo there, so they just got shaking, not tsunami damage.

Google Translate wrote:

Tokyo Ikebukuro is. I'm shaking and really knock out the evacuation. The building looks insane sway sway .. .. I'm scared now!

L|ama

just by the way, a modern nuclear reactor would pretty require an earthquake, a tsunami, a 747, and a meteor all hitting it at the same time to do anything really dangerous

Crashmo

Big Red Tie wrote: »

luckily my friend's relatives aren't in the main city that was hit
they've probably evacuated

a small huzzah for them, then

thedude_frombaywatch

Artreus wrote: »

thedude_frombaywatch wrote: »

How long has this super moon been known here. First time i've heard of it. Amazing stuff

I'm glaring at you angrily

Olivaw

My aunt lives in Tokyo

I really hope she's okay

Viscount Islands

Anime joke

Tsunamis terrify me and I hope there's not too many deaths or damage.

L|ama

watching the footage and figuring out the of scale made realise god damn there is no way you are outrunning one of those fuckers

SabreMau

Ok, NHK is apparently reporting that the nuclear reaction in question did shut down (scrammed, I think), but that the problem is a coolant system failed and they need it to carry away residual heat as it cools down.

thedude_frombaywatch

If anyone interested here's a strait feed to japanese tv for those who don't have it at home.
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/tbstv

thedude_frombaywatch

Holy shit. I just watched two waves just smash into this dry parking lot from North and South sides and wash them away like toys.

I drew arrows

SabreMau

That's about 20 seconds into this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO2-LT9pflM

Kashi

Living in the western part of Ibaraki Prefecture. All the teachers I work with say this is the first time they've ever experienced something this big, and I believe it.

We probably won't have a good idea of just how much damage this is going to be until tomorrow. This sucks, major, but honestly a lot of what's gone down has been fairly lucky.

This thing hit us in the middle of the day, when people are least likely to have their heaters running (or even be at home for that matter.) If this had happened in the middle of the night there would likely be many, many more places on fire right now.

Most of the damage is probably going to be from the tsunami rather than the quakes themselves. Japan has been prepping pretty much every building they've been physically able for this size quake. They've been predicting a "big one" for quite some time, though it was expected to be more to the south. This is why you'll probably not see quite the same degree of devastation as you did in New Zealand, although this is over a much wider area (nearly the whole country felt the quake.)

It's been seven hours now and we are still feeling aftershocks. This is my first experience with an earthquake worth noting. Everything before this has been like a mild cough compared to now, which you might equate to someone having a coughing fit so hard they break one of their own ribs.

Seven hours. It's been so long the fear has begun to blur into annoyance. Each shock is scary, but I also have this feeling of "come on now, stop it already."

Everyone I know here is safe and sound. I can only hope that most others share my good fortune.

L|ama

the unending aftershocks have been the biggest complaint from everyone i know in christchurch, and I can definitely understand that

SabreMau

Well, there's a couple of people sitting on the beach in Waikiki on the live camera feed. They got about 5-20 minutes to scoot.

DrZiplock

Kashi wrote: »

It's been seven hours now and we are still feeling aftershocks. This is my first experience with an earthquake worth noting. Everything before this has been like a mild cough compared to now, which you might equate to someone having a coughing fit so hard they break one of their own ribs.

This part isn't surprising considering that this is one of the strongest quakes in recorded history.

Glad that you and yours are alright.

thedude_frombaywatch

Live feed from hawaii? Where i could use another video feed. (i have 4 so far)

Big Red Tie

the guy on the news called them dumb

my friend lives on a mountain overlooking waikiki, she's going to try get footage if anything happens (iphone camera, might not really be good enough at that distance)

SabreMau

This is the one I've got open:

SabreMau wrote: »

Just watching a Hawaiian TV station here, first waves due in about an hour.

Big Red Tie wrote: »

my friend lives on a mountain overlooking waikiki, she's going to try get footage if anything happens (iphone camera, might not really be good enough at that distance)

The lighting's not really all that good at 3 AM, an iPhone camera will probably just see a lot of blank.

Helpless Rock

This CNN live feed of the Hawaii news is both aggravating and hilarious in that it's just a shot of a browser to a different CNN page with that video full screened. And every so often that video times out so you see the browser and some dude has to sit there and refresh the page and full screen the video again.

Duke 2.0

SabreMau wrote: »

Well, there's a couple of people sitting on the beach in Waikiki on the live camera feed. They got about 5-20 minutes to scoot.

Could you provide a link to this? I'll want to keep an eye on this developing.

Big Red Tie

apparently the people at waikiki beach left
hahaha

thedude_frombaywatch

There's some good feeds from cnn here.

CNN Hawaii coverage

Viscount Islands

Well you know

It was either that or die.

SabreMau

Big Red Tie wrote: »

apparently the people at waikiki beach left
hahaha

Yeah, it looked like they were joined by a third guy who looked to be (from a distance) a police officer, and then the next time they went to that camera they were all gone.

Duke 2.0

Allegedly there are twitter remarks that the water has receded around 150 feet. Not a terribly reliable source, but ominous nevertheless.

Der Waffle Mous

holy shit

SabreMau

The seat those guys were on is now wet.

Duke 2.0

CBS feed is showing the water level is rising. Last couple of minutes have had calm shores, and ripples are starting to show.

The wave is already here.

Big Red Tie

yeah
and the one with the floodlights by diamond head went all the way up and past the wall

Foolproof

so what is the distance between the epicenter and hawaii?

Artreus

Really, really far

edit: fortunately they've had a lot of warning so hopefully nobody will get hurt there

Foolproof

Artreus wrote: »

Really, really far

edit: fortunately they've had a lot of warning so hopefully nobody will get hurt there

I'm just wondering about the mph of the wave.

Reigner

All the sites that have been linked have their media players bocked at work. WTH work, this is kinda more important than whatever paranoia you guys have about internet video clips.

stimtokolos

When my mum heard about this she just got really angry about them having nuclear power.
If I say anything about how safe newer plants are she will just block it out and get mad. So I essentially have to sit and bite my lip any time nuclear power is mentioned. Ever. Nope not possible you can't make something that has gone wrong before safe ever.

She goes apeshit about power usage too, one LED that is sitting on while something isn't in use sends her into a frenzy.

Helpless Rock

Foolproof wrote: »

Artreus wrote: »

Really, really far

edit: fortunately they've had a lot of warning so hopefully nobody will get hurt there

I'm just wondering about the mph of the wave.

I'm pretty tired at this point, but I'm pretty sure the news I was listening to just said they could have been going 80mph, but at the point of them reaching the coast they're not going that fast any more. At least at this point.

Olivaw

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/yokosonews

A Japanese guy speaking in English relaying news and damage reports directly from Japanese TV to the internet

There are times that I'm amazed at the sheer goddamn utility of the internet

SabreMau

Foolproof wrote: »

so what is the distance between the epicenter and hawaii?

Cut-and-pasting the 500 mile marker on Google maps estimates around 3500 miles.

Artreus

Foolproof wrote: »

Artreus wrote: »

Really, really far

edit: fortunately they've had a lot of warning so hopefully nobody will get hurt there

I'm just wondering about the mph of the wave.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/natural-disasters/tsunami3.htm

Also a quick and dirty googling suggest that at sea it was going at least 500 mph. It slows down a bunch when it gets to shallow water though

Mysst

called my dad in hawaii to make sure everything is good. either he answered his phone underwater or I woke him up, so yeah, I think he's alright